New Minimum Wage, Overtime Orders Could Haunt Lenders

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How will these affect you? Immediately there is no effect on lenders, but down the road it's possible.

The two executive orders the president signed have very different implications. The first pertaining to a minimum wage hike only applies to federal contractors executing agreements with the government. Hence, most lenders are not impacted. The second order the president signed pertains to minimum wage. This order requires the Department of Labor to develop new standards for determining the level of compensation needed for certain employees to maintain exempt status.

Currently persons subject to the executive, professional and administrative exemptions, need to maintain a salary of at least $455/week in addition to having exempt responsibilities to avoid overtime and time-keeping requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The executive order signed by the president essentially requires the Department of Labor to set a new threshold that would raise the minimum salary for exempt status above its current levels. These new levels would likely take effect in 2015.

For most lenders, the majority of their loan officers are either nonexempt or subject to the outside sales exemption (for which there is no minimum salary). For those lenders, this action will have little impact on the compensation of loan officers.

On the other hand, for lenders who use the administrative exemption or who have exempt branch managers, the new regulations will impact the base salary needed to maintain exempt status. Of course, those regulations have not been developed so immediately there is no impact.